'North Korea not a suicidal regime'

North Korea has reportedly moved its mid-range missiles within range of US bases in the Pacific. With US now starting a military buildup in the region, many fear the worst. But some experts believe the threat of war is avoidable.

The latest exchange of tit-for-tat military posturing and
threats between the US and North Korea dates back to February, when
following Pyongyang’s third missile test, the international
community slapped its latest round of sanctions onto the
regime.

This brought on more concrete action from the two countries,
involving the deployment of stealth fighter jets, a warship and now
a strengthening of the US military base in Guam – with North Korea
now saying it has its top commanders’ final approval for a nuclear
strike on US bases in the Pacific and South Korea.

RT has spoken to a number of experts on the prospect of the
possible escalation of hostilities between Washington and
Pyongyang. Their views all converge on one premise - that North
Korea’s actions are testimony to the fact that they actually want
to negotiate – not “commit national suicide”.

Co-Director of the ‘Foreign Policy In Focus’, John Feffer
believes that at such a point in the dialogue between two nations
hostile towards each other, the words of actors are not always
rational and should not be understood as serious threats.

RT:North Korea recently moving long-range equipment
to make it more in range of US bases in the Pacific: is it just
blusters, is this gamesmanship, is this a real threat? What do you
think?

JF: I think it’s just gamesmanship. North Korea is trying
to get the US back to the negotiating table. And its missile range
is frankly not reliable, nor long enough to make it to US
positions.

RT:So, in terms of the concept of brinksmanship, how
far do you think both sides are willing to ratchet up the tension
before somebody finally takes a breath and says “All right, lets’
see what we can do here”?

JF: If these were two rational actors, I would say they
should already have made the decision to back down. Unfortunately
in a situation like this it’s not rationality that governs the
actions of the players. They’re responding to, sometimes,
unconscious queues, and sometimes to non-rational factors. But
North Korea is not a suicidal regime. I don’t think that Kim Jong-
un has demonstrated an interest in setting up a situation in which
the US or South Korea simply eradicate his government. And of
course the US isn’t particularly interested in any kind of a
conflict at this point, especially with cuts going through in the
military sector.

Danny Schechter, an independent film-maker and media critic
echoes Feffer’s opinion, adding that, despite North Korea’s
historic mistreatment of its people, there is a concerted effort at
tarnishing its image and simplifying the reasons for its actions
through media and Hollywood entertainment, and that the harmful
effects of such a strategy make the public immune to analyzing
Pyongyang’s actions in any kind of light but the one we are
presented with by the United States.

RT:You’ve written about the so-called demonization of
North Korea in the media. How is it being demonized?

DS: Well, there’s a new movie out, called ‘Olympus Has
Fallen’… it’s about North Koreans invading the White House, taking
the president hostage, shredding and trashing the whole place,
killing and massacring all kinds of civilians. It’s the sort of
movie that incites a violent response… these stereotypes end up
contributing to a climate of tension. Just today, Anonymous [the
hacker group] reportedly has stolen North Korean internet emails,
so the conflict is broadening and widening into civil society.

RT:But it’s hardly surprising the whole world has
turned on it, because it’s actually threatening to bomb the US with
a nuclear bomb.

DS: I hate to tell you this, but what they’re actually
saying and what we’re reading may be very, very different. PBS News
Hour recently interviewed a member of the CIA who specializes in
North Korea. He’s saying that actually the developments there
are positive from an American point of view. The military is less
involved, less engaged with the new government. There’s a promise
and a possibility of a breakthrough there. So, I don’t think we’re
just listening to our fears, our own voices based on stereotypes
and historic reactions to the ‘nasty commies’ in North Korea. I
think there’s something else going on here that we’re not
seeing...This is a situation with historical roots which we need to
understand.

RT:We’re not going to see a war, are we?

I think we’re going to see a war of words… there’s other stuff
happening in North Korea that we don’t know, but perhaps we don’t
want to know, because it’s more convenient as a faceless brutal
enemy than as a possible partner in the region in a peninsula
that’s still divided all these years later by war, dictatorship,
the aftermath of WW2 etc. You have to get into the history and
understand where they’re coming from if you want to talk to them
and communicate with them and not just feel good about denouncing
them.